Life, Animated

To research more about autism, my group watched a film called 'Life Animated.' Released in 2016, the film tells the story of an autistic man called Owen Suskind, who has used Disney animated films throughout his life as a way to understand the world around him. The documentary was really touching and helped me to understand what life is actually like for autistic people and also gave me a new appreciation for Disney films because the effect they had had on Owen's life was obviously profound. He used different scenarios in the films to overcome challenges in his own life and to understand the world around him,he applied the structure in the films to real life. In one example, he compared himself to Quasimodo from the Hunchback of Notre Dame, to show how he felt like an outcast but now feels he fits in. The film also showed how creative people with autism can be, with beautiful animated scenes showing a world, 'The Land of the Lost Sidekicks' that Owen had created. The animation here was really beautiful and colourful, contrasting with the more sketchy and dark animation that was used at the beginning of the films to show the way the world was seen by Owen before he discovered his coping mechanism. I think this film helped us all understand the mind of someone with autism more and we all took inspiration from it for what we wanted our animations to be like; portraying autism as something not wholly negative.